In recent years, the role of multisensory integration in sensory processing and perception has attracted much scientific interest. However, the integration from neurophysiology, neuroimaging and especially neural network modeling on specific topics is still very much missing. Similar integration from development and clinical studies is also much needed. Here we propose to achieve such integration, in relation to auditory-visual interactions. The first speaker will present the specialization of the barn owl for hunting small prey in dimly lighted and acoustically noisy environments which advocates it as an excellent model for studying auditory-visual integration. The next two talks will build on this and will present neuroimaging and behavioral experiments of auditory-visual integration in humans. Similarly to the experiments in the barn owl these studies use natural dynamic stimuli. They will specifically focus on audio-visual aspects of human communication, sight restoration and brain development in health and disease (e.g. in congenital blindness and prosopagnosics). We will conclude by presenting a novel neural network model to achieve optimal multi- sensory integration.

Speakers:
Amir Amedi (The Hebrew University): Introduction
Yoram Gutfreund (The Technicon): “Visual – auditory integration in the barn owl's brain: A neuroethological approach�
Katharina Von Kriegstein (University College of London, U.K.): “A multisensory perspective on human auditory communication�
Amir Amedi (The Hebrew University): “Audio-visual integration for objects: novel insights from studying sensory substitution and visual cortex development.�
Ron Meir (The Technion): “Optimal multi-sensory integration based on dynamic spike train decoding by a neural network�